A niche insult from the Star Wars universe has made an improbable leap into the mainstream, becoming so popular that it landed on Collins Dictionary’s 2025 list of notable words. “Clanker,” a derogatory term for battle droids in The Clone Wars series, has been adopted as the internet’s favorite insult for real-world AI.
Lexicographers at Collins, who monitor a 24-billion-word corpus, tracked the word’s viral spread on social media. It is now frequently used to express “frustrations with, and distrust of, AI chatbots and platforms.” When an automated system fails, misunderstands a prompt, or gives a nonsensical answer, users dismiss it as a “clanker.”
The term’s popularity highlights a significant public backlash against the rapid, and often clumsy, rollout of AI in daily life. It was a strong contender for Word of the Year, perfectly capturing the negative side of the 2025 tech story.
Ultimately, “clanker” was beaten by “vibe coding,” a term for using AI productively to write code. The fact that the two top words of the year were these opposing AI terms perfectly illustrates the central tension of 2025.
The list also included other tech-related terms like “broligarchy” (a name for tech leaders) and “biohacking” (DIY health tech). It also featured social media terms like “aura farming” (looking cool) and “glaze” (excessive praise).